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3 February 2003
Nasty DEFRA
(Filed 3/2/03)
© www.land-care.org.uk
The behaviour of DEFRA beggars belief. Christopher
Booker’s Notebook in the Telegraph of 3rd February 2003 reveals
just how nasty they really are (see below).
DEFRA have been the cause of extensive and deep
grief - yet they pursue legal costs and send in the bailiffs to
the home of an environmental science teacher and her son when they
need not have done. Why? Apparently because the appeal judge reckoned
that if a Government minister thought that a cull was necessary
then that opinion must be accepted. This in the face of the huge
row over whether or not the contingency cull was legal, which it
wasn’t.
It is common knowledge that DEFRA’s policies
during the UK 2001 FMD crisis have been extensively and severely
criticised (1).
No wonder the government did everything to avoid
a proper public enquiry - it might have opened the eyes of the judge
if there had been. So the law is useless against Governmental policies
that are legally flawed. The Government Department in question clearly
has no heart. Sounds like real third world stuff. The “system”
should be deeply ashamed.
© www.land-care.org.uk
Reference
1. European Parliament Temporary
Committee on Foot and Mouth Disease (2002). Report on measures to
control Foot and Mouth Disease in the European Union in 2001 and
future measures to prevent and control animal diseases in the European
Union.
(Filed 18 December 2002, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
Christopher Booker’s Notebook
(Filed: 02/02/2003)
The Telegraph
Monday 3 February 2003
Defra fights dirty with anti-cull campaigner
This week bailiffs acting for the Department of
the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will enter a family home
in Montgomeryshire to remove a toy jeep and quad bike, the prized
possessions of a 12-year old boy, in pursuit of a claim for £17,000
in legal costs against his mother.
During the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic, Janet
Hughes, an environmental sciences teacher, spent her life savings
in a bid to have the cull of 10,000 healthy sheep on the Brecon
Beacons declared illegal. When her case was dismissed last year,
Defra announced it would pursue her for its costs.
Last week, when Defra’s bailiffs arrived
at the house in the village of Churchstoke, they listed her son
Matthew’s toys on their seizure notice, and this week will
return to remove them, along with the family car and most of the
contents of her home.
Two years ago, having grown up in a farming family,
Janet Hughes became increasingly disturbed at the mass killing of
healthy sheep around her village. In June 2001, when the Welsh Assembly
began a “contiguous cull” of thousands of sheep on the
Brecon Beacons, she was surprised at the lack of opposition from
local farmers, persuaded to acquiesce in the slaughter of their
animals by compensation way above their market value.
Having bought 10 Brecon sheep to establish her
legal involvement, she spent her £11,500 savings and £10,000
from members of the public in applying for judicial review of the
policy.
She argued that the Assembly had no power to carry
out a “contiguous cull”, since the 1981 Animal Health
Act only authorised the killing of animals that had been infected
or directly exposed to infection.
Having exhausted her funds, she continued on her
own until, in January 2002, Lord Justice Latham dismissed her case
in the Appeal Court by ruling that, if a minister believed there
was a reason for the contiguous cull policy, the courts must accept
his opinion.
By now the Assembly’s case had been taken
over by Defra, desperate to uphold the legality of its contiguous
cull policy - the killing of animals just because they were within
a few kilometres of infection - despite a High Court ruling in the
“Grunty the pig” case that the ministry was not empowered
to carry out “blanket slaughter”.
It was Defra’s legal department that insisted,
following Latham’s ruling, that Miss Hughes must pay the ministry’s
£17,000 costs, even though it was not against Defra she had
brought her case.
After months of silence, Miss Hughes was last
week astonished to have a visit from the bailiffs, combing her house
for goods they intended to seize.
Her son has fully supported his mother’s
battle, but what no one could have anticipated was that the bailiffs
would be entitled to remove his prized toys, the jeep and quad bike
worth £600, on the grounds that, as a child, his possessions
were not his property but his mother’s.
The same day Defra announced that, under a new
European Union law, pig keepers must provide their pigs with toys
to keep them happy. But Matthew must lose his toys because of his
mother’s love of animals. Doubtless Defra will give them to
the pigs.
Christopher Booker
Further Reading Recommended by Land-Care
DEFRA (2003). 20-day Farm Standstill Reduced to 6 Days for England
and Wales - DEFRA News Release, 23/01/03.
(Filed 24 January 2003, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
FMD Forum (2003). Response to DEFRA FMD Contingency Plan.
(Filed 23 January 2003, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
DEFRA requests comments on Foot and Mouth Contingency Plan by 28th
February 2003.
(Filed 24 January 2003, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
DEFRA’s proposals for management of future outbreaks of FMD.
(Filed 3 January 2003, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
DEFRA's Foot and Mouth Disease Contingency Plan, Version 2.5 (6/11/2002).
(Filed November 2002, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
Update September 2002 on Uruguay 2001 FMD Outbreak and its Subsequent
Control. Information provided by the Uruguay Embassy in London.
(Filed 4 November 2002, www.land-care.org.uk,
click here
to view).
Irvine, W. J. (2002). How Vaccination was used for Foot and Mouth
Disease in Uruguay in April 2001 and subsequently.
(Filed October 2002, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
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